Venturing into the lesser known…

With Gonzo magazine’s, Alan Dearling

Four days of talks, films, fire, fun, music, theatre and festi activities at the last major non-legalised squat, ADM, in Amsterdam’s Westport

Squatters first moved into the ‘contested’ derelict, old shipbuilding area of Amsterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij (ADM, aka, the Amsterdam Drydock Company) something like 27 years ago when shipbuilding was abandoned at ADM. It was after all shipbuilding activities finally halted in 1997, and the previously buoyant shipbuilding industry located at the merged ADM and NDSM yards foundered, that a second wave of artists, musicians, and other creative folk moved onto the ADM site. It became their innovative, often magical playground – their creative home.

The ADM residents describe it as:

“The largest and oldest creative freehaven in the Netherlands…arising from the longing to experiment…we improvise with time and money, test our place in the ecosystem, tinker with human relationships and build sculptures, compositions, heat sources and means of transport using an other’s waste. It is a niche in the margin of organised society. A laboratory where the arrangement of our daily lives is practised as an art form, where the development of simple, sustainable solutions are automatic and innovation is not trendy, but pure necessity.”

Pretty Vacant – A Manifesto on Free Cultural Spaces

At the end of the 7th Futurologic Symposium on Free Cultural Spaces, ADM, Amsterdam, October 2017, we issued a ‘Pretty Vacant’ Manifesto in praise of the extremely diverse range of Free Cultural Spaces around the world. An invitation for all people to support the adventurous exploratories that are part of the FCS. Free Cultural Spaces are not just festivals and squats, but include many intentional communities, eco- and organics initiatives, free schools, creative nomads and more. Rock on, and get our world positively shaking again!

There were eight points in the eventual Manifesto. Here are three which capture the spirit of the FCS movement world-wide:

We are the inhabitants and users of Free Cultural Spaces. People of all walks of life meet each other in Free Cultural Spaces. These spaces are particularly well suited for exploring the unknown and pushing boundaries. Their personal charisma reinforces the bonds between urban, rural and neighbourhood dwellers, and their hospitality fosters a versatile cosmopolitan society.

A free cultural climate is at odds with the proliferating gentrification. Instead of attempting to eject (less affluent) elements in order to upgrade neighbourhoods or districts, Free Cultural Spaces promote diversity and mutual solidarity. No homogenization of the ab-normal, but a welcoming of the extraordinary.

When city councils foster an even distribution of Free Cultural Spaces, spontaneous Zones of Opportunity (ZOOs) will arise everywhere, in city centres as well as on their peripheries. And it must be ‘the responsibility of the community as a whole’ to provide alternative locations whenever existing Free Cultural Spaces disappear.

After three annual recurring symposia in Ruigoord and three in Boom-Land in Portugal, Christiania in Denmark and the Republic of Uzupis in Lithuania, the initiators again focus on Amsterdam. Selected this time is the ADM in Westpoort, one of the few pearls of freedom that is still present in the city.

The aim is to come up with a number of concrete proposals regarding alternatives for an again liveable and creative city. The preservation of the last free cultural spaces in the margin is at stake, but attention to a creative drip for the city center is also required according to the organizers. It is not just about Amsterdam. The statement to be made about the importance of new free cultural spaces in the inner cities will be sent to the municipal councils of various major cities at home and abroad. In addition to the manifestation on the ADM terrain, making a statement in the city itself is also considered, so that other people may be infected with the ‘freedom virus’.

There are free cultural spaces of all kinds. Breeding spaces focus on living / working spaces for artists, designers and creators. But mini societies, such as on the ADM, consist of people of different backgrounds. Just like in Ruigoord there is art and there is a festival culture. Only on the ADM is not everyone ‘artist’, but especially ‘life artist’.

Disneyland is closer than you think. The city center is an affluent consumer paradise. There is no vagabond to be seen and no one makes a drawing on the pavement anymore. Lost tourists are still searching for the magic of places like Slangenpand (=> snake house), Schijnheilig, Plein Werker, Zebra House, Kalendarpanden, Huize Chaos, Uilenburgt, Pampus, Wijers or Aorta; Places that once allowed the city to bust, thereby giving the imago of Magic Center of Amsterdam form and content. Amsterdam is barren without an actual story. Everyone knows: a city without life is doomed.

The symposium is part of the ADM festival on 12, 13 and 14 October. Participants are the Culturele Stelling (=> Cultural Barricade) of Amsterdam, consisting of some thirty free intercultural spaces such as Domijn, Ruigoord, Zaal 100, OT301, Tetterode, Bajesdorp, Urban Resort, Nieuw and Meer, Rijkshemelvaart and Nieuwland. Also included are: Christiania in Copenhagen, Gangenviertel Hamburg, Autonomedia New York, Doel near Antwerp, Republic of Uzupis in Vilnius, Institut for X in Arhus, Het Poortgebouw (The Gate Building) in Rotterdam, De Vrijplaats (=> Te Free space) in Leiden and het Landbouwbelang (=> the Agricultural Interest) in Maastricht. (to be continued)

AMSTERDAM IS GETTING DESTROYEDBy: Eric Duivenvoorden

Such a space to play was always to be found in Amsterdam in the countless places where decades ago a certain amount of being against the grain, set the tone. In the free space of the city everything could be done which elsewhere wasn’t possible. It created a cultural and creative climate that exercised an irresistible appeal on many. From far away places, they were attracted: the artists, dare devils, inventors, vagabonds, creators and other strange birds. They let the city flourish and spread the fame of the Magic Center Amsterdam around the world.
But now the city is threatened with going under by its own success. The once-so-powerful life line is squished by the relentless growth of negligent city abusers. What remains of that free cultural place where Amsterdam was once so famous for? Only a few enclaves are still there, the majority far away, outside of the city.

It’s time to get some space back in the middle of the city.Text to introduce the Futorological Symposium – ADM Amsterdam in October 2017
Amsterdam Fair City, www.faircity.amsterdam

This summer, I’m helping my friend Tomas J in Lithuania with his new, beautiful rural festival site. It is at the Mushroom Farm, 70 km from the city of Vilnius. Ponds for swimming, areas for art, fun, music and frolics.

In July, young adults from Germany and Lithuania are running the Braille Satellite festival. And in August, I am more directly involved with putting on the first Magick Gathering. 50 years on from the Summer of Love. Old and new tribes with a contemporary hippie feel.

Come share the trip with Alan Dearling!

Still a Utopian!

Thomas Cepaitis

I’m still a digger and dreamer. Meaning, I like to contribute my five-penneth worth of passion and enthusiasm to the communal efforts of others, to help make the big, bad World just a little bit better. A bit greener (celebrating the efforts of the original diggers and levellers). A bit more caring. A world with a little more time, support and passion for ‘creativity’ in all its myriad forms – art, music, literature (some of the dreamers). What a group of us call ‘Free Cultural Spaces’. After Free Cultural Spaces Symposium (FCS)events in Ruigoord, Amsterdam; Boom Festival, Portugal; and last year in the Free Town of Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark, this year our core group headed from the United States of America, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine, Belgium and me from Scotland, at the invitation of Užupis Republic Foreign Minister, Thomas Cepaitis (right). He’s a poet, a writer and an artist. Read More

An actual update about the situation in Europe’s Heartland. We read, see and think about the nomadic effort so many people took to reach the European mainland. Lots of them have fled from the games-that-people-play in the Arabic World, some of us fear that the canceled World War III might evolve into a Civil War. But the Germans have already lived through both types of war! The situation is actually pretty hope-giving.

Despite of individual conflicts, fears that are just or are just part of the hype, it’s going in the good direction. The culture of the Evening and the Night-continents are both getting into the Light. What makes us different is the color of our skin. Not many animals seem to have this, let alone genetic experiments from the past or miracles of nature. We have it by the force of mixing, and this is part of the essence of history. The worldwide mix that’s taking place, is a milestone in history.

We have also seen war before. In past lives or maybe even in our own country. The tenor, or the way that our species is getting harmonized, is that we all believe in something. Nordic friends of our band, would call this A TING. But without evangelizing an omega=message, you can be sure that what’s happening in the central-european country is illustrative of the solution for the refugee-problem. It is not a problem in a classical sence.

Political sensitivity is a fashionable thing of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Some of us are fed up with this and seek new ways to utter themselves. Think of the Pegida-movement, that is partly popular, partly xenofobic, but neither left nor right. Some muslims do terrible things, to one another or to foreigners to them. It doesn’t really matter in what country you were born to see the light in each others faces or eyes. Old news for most of us!

What is so fascinating is that if you put on your ‘futurological glasses’ you can think of the opportunities there are with so much fresh blood. Thinking about war, this sounds negative. But if you would stimulate the creative aspect that resides in every soul, fresh blood is painting with rainbowcolours! Therefor, what’s evolving in Europe’s Heartland is that countless new free cultural spaces (the exterior kind of) have been put in every village with governmental finance behind it!

Countless hearts and minds shape our future into being. Our club is a modest contribution to unification in a broader sence than under Yin Yang, Xess Xava, or Zuper Zelfish-money walking into oblivion. Nobody should be afraid of Islam, because nobody really knows what it was way back when. Just as Boeddha-the-Prophet wasn’t the inventor of Buddhism, islamism isn’t the purpose of Faith. It’s just an extra day-off in the New Calendar.

Freeport Doel, 2016-02-16.

Translation into German available will soon be available ON this site. But who knows a bit Kurdish to send this to Turkey? Check the Forum, we will all join in later or see one another somewhere in the Bush-Bush in 2020 … tnx

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